yeh I'm glad to read people's opinions have changed toward "it's all music", as opposed to the diversion we have had in the past.

so basically if I have a drum machine with pre-made beats on it and press "play", no matter how monotonous or un-original it is, it's music. And I didn't write it myself.

now if I use Native Instruments Reaktor I can find a few patches that go about creating background sounds all by themselves. However boring this is to me to turn on, and I'm definately not getting any artistical satisfaction out it, it sounds absolutely grand and I consider this "music" to every definition of it.

Damn birds in the evening and the morning when I'm in bed drifting away... It's pure music. Even the seagulls. Even the cars passing by the road in the distance. The rolling of the thunder and the howling of the wind, it's the rhythm of nature, it's the Tongue of Mother Earth.

now take an alarm signal p.e. when you're a process operator on a workfloor. "beep" itself is no music... but you could sample it... put it in a program that repeatedly plays it and BAM there's your music. However if the "beep" would consistently go off on the workfloor and another signal would back it up, like a slow whoop or so, or some bell going "TRRRRRRRIRIRRRIRRIRIRIIINGNGNNNGNGNG" then there's music again. With people starting to shout loudly and running around in a crazed frenzy it damn sure will start looking like a spontenous rave in no time.

If you get lucky enough lights will start flashing and smoke will start filling the room, and you didn't have to do a thing for it. You fail at being a good process operator, but sure as hell you're an ace musician!

Now that's music... Correct me if I'm wrong.

The point of this thread seems to be that music is a matter of structure and intent. Your arguments were also addressed by John Cage and a large community of musicians who incorporate stochastic (random) elements to composition.
My focus on this was more on the denial of musicianship of people who compose directly to the PC using samples and vst synthesizers. There can be debate as to whether they are performance artists, but when every sound and beat has been intentionally selected by a human mind, then the machine did NOT compose it, the person did. If the performer used canned beats but an original melody, the argument holds. They are definitely composing music: now the only issue is whether it is any good or whether you like it.

Your example of beeps and alarm signals is also a matter of interpretation. On a factory floor there is no musical context: nobody is expecting to hear music when a sound they have been conditioned to associate with danger occurs. Transplant the same sound to a dance hall and the interpretation would be quite different. Take away the sampled siren from the 13th Floor Elevator's song "Fire Engine" and you would lose most of the effect of the song. Were the Elevators just faking it?

Absolutely,but the intent is what really plays a role as much as perception.(In my opinion)

When it is a question of intent, the intent of the listeners may count as much as the composer, if not more so. An audience who is determined that they have come to hear a musical show will tend to hear music, even if they are presented with semi random assemblages of sound. Similarly, firefighters attempting to extinguish a blaze at a factory would not recognize (or even have time to deal with) the musical elements of the fire plus the falling support beams of the structure. And would you want them to? To everything there is a season and a time...even for random sounds incorporated into music. Consider an early attempt to incorporate non-musical sounds into a musical context: "Beetlebaum" by Spike Jones.

Random sounds are often incorporated in soundscape-oriented music... Think of wind chimes for instance. But also the sound of the ocean, and again tweeting birds. They are brought into context by the observer more than by the artist creating the soundscape. Most soundscape artists I know just groove away on their own dreams and they don't really care about what someone else hears in their music, it might be something completely different from what they themselves are into - and that's the trick of that type of music.

So - it's the observer who experiences when and how something is music. Then, who is the musician behind it? Surely a soundscape artist has a completely different method of coming to a result than a typical singer/songwriter guitarist. There is no way to compare the two in terms of who is the "better" musician... But one can easily determine that both are deserving of the label "musician" in the end:

"What have you done?"

"I have made a piece of music"

"Then you must be a musician."

Does sound have to be organised in order to be music?
If so, then birds surely make music. They definately organise their tones to come to their result. They are by all means communicating, man can only guess how detailed the nuances of their singing are.

In fact, in every person's daily chit chat there's a pitch variation while talking. This is the basis of mood transfer from individual to individual, and it is this which marks the concept of musical melody. Pitch is only one small part of the entire deal - there's intonation, pauses, a dynamic interaction with the opposite party and background sounds (a noisy workfloor causes people to raise their voices, for instance). The exact same principles of communication are found in music, which is only natural, since music finds it's origin in the way lifeforms in general communicate with eachother. From this point of view, each individual composes it's own moods and stories to transfer, and interprets those of other individuals... So in this case everyone can claim to be a composer... And you can't prove them wrong. But what if one rejects the label? The man plays a brilliant guitar and says: "I'm no musician, I'm just a fiddler" ... Where does it end? We compose until we decompose, the rest is just a matter of opinions, imho.

Like art, being a musician is part of the common human experience. There are people who are tone deaf, and others have no inclination, but even a 7 year old can play a tune on the piano. That is musicianship and is no less valid than any other definition. It is us weirdo's that try to do more than casual music that earn the appellation. But to try to discriminate against the serious musician based on the tools of choice is the silly part.

Incorporating random elements into music is as old as music. A collection of several species of birds are singing together where you hear it and a melody occurs to you. Is it fake? No, it's called inspiration. I have a random selection of samples playing on my PC and a rhythm pattern occurs to me that goes with it. Is it fake? No! It's called inspiration. If you hear it and think it sounds terrible, that is fair. I will agree with and defend your right to judge music of any sort. But to deny that it IS music is the problem. We all make music. It boils down to quality of production and taste.

I love violin music. The violin does NOT love me back. I can't make anything but noise from it. But if I am writing music that demands a violinist and all I can afford is a machine that fakes it, then I am going to use what I can get. And, yes, anyone who claims to be a musician, is one. Honor their claim. Now if they claim to be a GOOD one without being able to play a note, then we have an argument.

Music is music. Music is communication. I posted an excerpt from my book at http://www.alluvialgems.com/Glossary.htm#M with a definition of music. I also define who is a musician as well. Finally, if you disagree with me, I have no problem with that. If everybody liked the same thing, there would be a horrible shortage of porridge and beer...

"There goes Elvis, decomposing in his inimitable style..."

I think if it makes sounds and someone likes it it can be called music in a broad sense... I mean the computer with all the vst and fruity loops samples ect.. is going to be the musical wave of the future ..oops I mean now..  look at a lot of the music that is done now for movies......... the sounds and effects used... lots of em are computer generated.. This is a art form in itself and takes practice and knowledge.  Not just tonal knowledge but software and computer knowledge... You can create whole symphonies with the right vst plug-ins .drums, pianos, guitars ..whatever ...or just some cool sounds  that aren't related to any traditional instruments.. imho those that don't think the computer can be musical, or people that use the computer for music or whatever  doesn't deserve any respect is probably living in the past.

Hehe, it gets worse than that:

Imagine if the classical composers (the ones that lived before, say, 1920) would have had access to computers... Do you think they would have avoided them? Or do you think their productivity would have tenfolded?

The real music it is in my head. Is my brain an instrument?
I would say it's not, because there's no way I can amplify it to vibrations.... as of yet.

In comparison (haha this is one hell of an analogy) a computer is a brain, yet it has the ability to amplify such "thoughts". Only because we're biological we are inhibited of this process .

Your brain is not the instrument, but it has the most direct access to the voice: singing may be the most direct form of musical composition. Well, a computer may be a brain but, until it can really think for itself, it is a tool. Try as they might, they still have not gotten a computer to rcognize letters in unfamiliar typefaces, which any 7 year old can do without effort.

I like the PC as amplifier a little better. The "brain" of a PC is really stupid, but boy is it FAST! Maybe it is so fast because it doesn't have the overhead of maintaining a self which has, among other things, musical taste (or lack of same).

Let's see, now......

I believe that I can pretty much sum up what music is in a short phrase;

Music is music when it is made with the intent of being music.

I'll try an example.

The discussion has led to speculation about how random sounds all around you might be considered music. I do not believe this to be true. When you hear random sounds occurring simultaneously, what you are hearing is just sounds occurring simultaneously. There is no music to it.YOu can record rain falling, and play it back, and you're not going to get music. What it is, however, is the sound of rain falling. The key is intent; without intent, there can be no organized pattern.
That is not to say that things like rain falling can't be used in music. But you have to intend them to be. If you're recording and the thunder outside your house is very loud, and is accidentally included in your recording, is the thunder a part of the music? Well, no, it's just a sound that accidentally was recorded, the same as normal recording fuzz.
Now take Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze. Near the end of the score, it says "make random picking sounds"
This was definitely intended to be music, and we can all agree that it is. But it's no less random than rain falling. The argument "it sounds cool" doesn't work at all.
1. Not everyone thinks it sounds cool and
2. Plenty of people think falling rain sounds cool.

So, IMHO, the difference is this; Jimi Hendrix intended his random sounds to be music, and thus organized them in some fashion, mainly "start here, and end here". But the organized isn't really the important bit.

Well, additionally to what s been said earlier - one can only define what music is for oneself... But I'll try to give a lead that one may want to consider. I'll sum things up that I've stated earlier, but in a different form (I must have nothing better to do)

- Music is a form of expression aswell as it is a form of communication (not all forms of expression are forms of communication).
- Bird tweet are a form of expression aswell as a form of communication, hence it can be regarded as "music" to a human observer, even though the bird might not intend it to be exactly that, but who can tell what goes on in a birds mind. However it may be interesting to note that linguistically, people would say "it sounded like music to me" implying that they do not consider bird tweet to be real music. Stringbreaker stated that this effect can be defined as "inspiration". Fair enough!
- I have stated that everyday communication (talking) and music follows the same principles when it comes to intonation, temperament, and dynamics with surrounding sounds as tools to transfer mood and information. Again, the observer can find inspiration by analysing the processes of everyday communication, it is similar to music, but would not be regarded as real music by the greater number of all observers. SO.... Given the principles of transferring mood and information, "intentional" (or "real") music applies intonation, temperament, and dynamics with surrounding sounds (i.e. the dynamics between the various instruments) to itself, creating a a virtual world in which all elements work together, isolated from the "real" world - well not entirely isolated, the real world may seep through via background sounds, like thunder in the mic, or even via samples of streetsounds that were deliberately put in. It does not matter HOW the result is achieved - whether it's digital, analog, live, a recording, or whatever - the result will be a stream of moods and information that the common human observer will accept and digest following the same principles of communication he is used to from daily life. Hence, he will be dealing with mood impressions and decide for himself whether he regards what he hears is "music" or not. What truly happens here, since we already decided what he was hearing actually IS music, is whether the observer allows himself to be inspired or not.

So there's where music and inspiration, given the given definitions, can get mixed up, but are clearly distinguishable by their condition of being "intentional" from a first person point of view, or not.

On a spiritual level - I have also stated that drifting away, lying on bed, listening to the sounds of the trees and the wind and the rain and whatnot can have the same effect as music - inspiration occurs -, but I have said that this can also be regarded the Voice of Nature, the Tongue of Mother Earth. What if the winds blow not so random, what if the universe is one, and everything in it is one big composition in which all elements interact dynamically with all other elements? Then there is an intention behind the sounds I'm hearing... I'm hearing God Speak backed by a Choir of Angels... * So Yes There's Music Rather Than Just Inspiration!

I did write to following lines once:
"I rather sing instead of talk, I rather dance instead of walk" (Thrown Away My Face - Totem Spectre)

Clearly stating that I'm living in a song, my life is music, and everything I do harmonizes with the opera magna that would eventually define my existance in this universe. teeheeeheeeheee

*this is just an example, I'm not religious in any way

Didn't read the whole thread but just wanted to say that music isn't every noise you hear.
Music is an organized sequence of sounds with a logical structure (some of them not easily recognized) and rhythm.
The rest is ambiance sounds and stuff.
But this is only my opinion.

         > Iszil

off thread topic but part of the discussion....The more I think about this I think whether it is musical all depends on the listener and their imagination.  There are some people that hear a train and go hmm a train ..their are some people that hear a train and hear a whole song involved....Some people hear a bird or crickets and come up with complete songs (some for musicals) so it may be inspiration but it must have also been musical for them to get the musical idea....I saw and heard ( I think it was on Nickelodeon)  they took regular streets sound ..Random at first then rhythmically adjusted it and when they were done it was a song with tone and melody and rhythm, all from the street sounds (car horns, people yelling, tires screeching doors slamming, construction sounds ect).
Their are also some modern day composers (choir and orchestra both) that use random noise and sounds in their compositions. 

  Some people would consider heavy metal music to be nothing but loud noise and to others it is the greatest sounds they know ......In conclusion, I believe it is  relative to the persons involved in the making of the sounds, and the listeners both......hmm no way to really get this question of musicality  pinned down because of that very thing......some will say it's music some will say it's not...

Never get a straight answer when there's people involved...

Fortunately, none of the people opining here have the authority to decide for anyone else whether something is or is not music.

The fact is that the audience has been helping to make that decision by throwing rotting fruit and offal at performers they don't like for centuries. Gives the performers serious motivation to provide what the audience likes regardless of personal taste.